Marsh Horsetail
Scientific name: Equisetum palustre L.
Diagnostic features
Stems to 60cm, deciduous, smooth to touch, simple or with usually rather sparse whorled branches, with 4-9(12) rounded ridges.
Cones on vegetative (but often shorter and less branched) shoots, rounded at apex.
Chromosome number: 2n=216.
Habitat
Native; all kinds of wet or marshy ground.
Distribution
Very common throughout British Isles.
Note
Unbranched stems usually differ from Equisetum variegatum in rounded, smooth stem-ridges; branched stems differ from Equisetum arvense in branches with teeth appressed (not spreading) and in lowest branch-internode shorter (not longer) than main stem leaf-sheath.
This species is keyed out on Page 15 of the Text Key.
Hybrids
- Equisetum x dycei C.N. Page (= Equisetum fluviatile x Equisetum palustre) occurs in West Scotland, Cards and West & Southwest Ireland; it is intermediate, resembling a weak plant of Equisetum litorale(x) but with fewer whorled branches.
- Equisetum x rothmaleri C.N. Page (= Equisetum arvense x Equisetum palustre) was found in North Ebudes in 1972, Herts in 1987, and since then elsewhere in Scotland; it is intermediate between the parents (cones on normal vegetative shoots) and sterile.
- Equisetum x font-queri Rothm. (=Equisetum palustre x Equisetum telmateia) occurs in scattered places in West Britain from South Hants to North Ebudes; it is intermediate in all characters (but with cones on vegetative shoots) and has sterile spores. |
